Australian Professional Fisherman

If you have a daughter, a sister, a niece, or a younger cousin on Instagram, you should read this once. In November 2023, a federal court unsealed a lawsuit filed by 33 state attorneys general against Meta. The unsealed pages don't read like a tech complaint. They read like a confession. Here is what Meta's own employees, in Meta's own words, knew was happening to kids on Instagram. By 2015, roughly 4 million users under the age of 13 were already on Instagram. The legal age is 13. Meta knew. By 2018, around 40% of 9 to 12 year olds were using Instagram daily. Between 2019 and 2023, Meta received over 1.1 million reports of under-13 accounts on Instagram. They disabled a fraction of them. The rest stayed live. Why? An internal 2024 document put it plainly: "acquiring new teen users is mission critical to the success of Instagram." A 2017 memo from Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, set the goal even earlier: make "teen time spent" the top company priority of the year. Teens were not the user. Teens were the product line. In a single day in 2022, Meta's own systems recommended 1.4 million potentially inappropriate adults to teen accounts. Internal data showed inappropriate interactions on Instagram were 38 times higher than on Facebook Messenger. Meta had an internal acronym for it: "IIC." Inappropriate interactions with children. Meta engineers calculated that turning teen accounts private by default would prevent roughly 5.4 million unwanted adult-to-teen interactions every single day. They knew this for years. They didn't ship private-by-default for teens until 2024. Now the part that should end careers. According to testimony from Vaishnavi Jayakumar, a former Meta safety executive, Instagram's internal policy required an account to rack up 17 separate strikes for sex trafficking before it would be suspended. Seventeen. A child predator could be reported sixteen times and keep their account. When Meta's own researchers proposed safety changes, they were overruled at the top. Internal emails show Mark Zuckerberg personally rejecting proposals from his own well-being team. One of his own executives, Margaret Gould Stewart, wrote back to him on the record: "I respect your call on this and I'll support it, but want to just say for the record that I don't think it's the right call given the risks." She was talking about risks to children. He overruled her. On beauty filters, the ones that morph teen girls' faces into something they can never look like in real life, Zuckerberg's defense in 2020 was that there was "no data" showing harm. Meanwhile his own internal survey found that 8% of teens aged 13 to 15 had seen self-harm content on Instagram in the past week. His own 2018 internal study found 58% of Facebook users showed signs of "problematic use." Publicly, Meta admitted to 3.1%. The employees were not confused about what they were building. One internal message: "Oh my gosh yall IG is a drug. We're basically pushers." Another: "Zuck has been talking about that for a while. Targeting 11 year olds feels like tobacco companies." A researcher writing about engagement: "Because our product exploits weaknesses in the human psychology to promote product engagement and time spent." An engineer on what the algorithm needed to optimize for: "sneaking a look at your phone under your desk in the middle of Chemistry." A product manager, on the record: "It's a social comparison app, fucking get used to it." In March 2026, a New Mexico jury awarded $375 million in a case tied to child safety failures on Meta's platforms. It is one verdict. There are dozens more cases still pending. Here is the part nobody is telling parents. The settings exist. Meta just doesn't turn them on by default for accounts they suspect belong to kids, because the kids don't have IDs and the parents aren't watching. Five minutes tonight: 1. On her phone, open Instagram. Go to Settings → Account privacy. Set the account to Private. 2. Go to Settings → Messages and story replies. Turn off message requests from anyone she doesn’t follow. 3. Go to Settings → Suggested content. Turn off “Sensitive content.” Set everything with a slider to “Less.” 4. Go to Settings → Time. Set a daily limit. 45 minutes is enough. 5. Go to Settings → Tags and mentions. Set to “People you follow” only. 6. Turn off Reels autoplay if you can’t delete Reels entirely. If she's under 16, you have the legal right to do this with her, not to her. Sit next to her. Show her the sex trafficking strike policy. Show her the "IG is a drug" quote from the people who built it. She will roll her eyes. She will also remember. The company that wrote "we're basically pushers" about itself is not going to protect her. You are. Send this to one parent who needs to see it tonight.

Ahhhh

How Australia’s media used to report Israeli atrocities. (with credit to Jose Teixeira) A 1948 account of the Jewish ethnic cleansing of Palestine by Ronald Monson, Daily Telegraph (Sydney) correspondent in Jerusalem. The tone of Monson's reporting was remarkably different to much of the Western media reporting from Palestine and Lebanon today. Monson did not try to downplay Zionist crimes and he humanised the Palestinian victims. Reporting when journalists were carrying through with their mission, to out the truth and did not succumb to pressure from lobbies with $$$ and threats. Report: They massacred Arab babies From RONALD MONSON In Jerusalem Jewish mortar bombs were coming over the Damascus Gate, bursting with shuddering explosions in narrow alleys when I visited the Jacob E. Spofford Memorial Hospital - American institution — close by the Gate today (Wednesday). I had come to visit the Arab orphans from Deir Yassin. I carried no sweets, because their nurse, Miriam Bedrossian, doesn't think sweets are good for year-old babies. Miriam had cared for these 15 babies since they were brought to the refuge a few days after the massacre of their parents last March. There were 16, but one died of wounds - aged nine months….

@JesusFerna7026 @Jgamer13 Original question was why Korea grew post war. Yes they recieved favourable political economic treatment

@AustralianProf2 @Jgamer13 Spain stagnation started around 1874. I forget more Spanish economic history every night that what you ever learned.

A fundamental lesson from my posts these last two weeks on modernization, industrial policy, and development is that development economics should be about understanding why South Korea got rich but Bolivia did not. The current field has largely given up on that question. Sharply identified RCTs on small micro programs are a fine way to publish in the AER and get tenure at a fancy university, but a profession that knows everything about microfinance impact evaluations and almost nothing about industrialization has misallocated its own intellectual capital on a pretty heroic scale. Four images of Seoul:

@Jgamer13 @JesusFerna7026 Yes the Franco dictatorship had nothing to do with Spain missing out on post WWII reconstruction growth. Korea did not enjoy favorable economic treatment to build it up as a bulwark against the Soviets

@JesusFerna7026 How much money did Spain borrow from the IMF in this time frame?

Home Affairs and immigration Minister Tony Burke has appeared on an Indian podcast. He argues that more immigration is the solution to Australia’s housing shortage, claims “we can’t build the houses we need without more immigration.” Burke also says he “doesn’t believe in guest-workers”, and wants all immigrants in Australia of whatever status to “fully participate in Democracy” (read: vote), regardless of citizenship.

" Sure the empire is butchering human beings at horrifying scale around the world, but on the bright side it’s creating refugees who will move to your country and bring you treats that you can order from an app on your phone."

@wright_l90101 @KellieTranter @Jansant And the Uni-party knows it and uses it to mop the floor with both of them

@AustralianProf2 @KellieTranter @Jansant The rusties of both sides are their own worst enemies. They will fight and argue to the death for their lives to be made the worst of each other.

You know it's budget time in Australia when politicians and insiders talk about a program that assists some of the most vulnerable people in the Australian community as being financially unsustainable but at the same time defence spending is increasing at record levels and we're already paying $500 billion ++ for the possibility that we'll get a couple of subs 15-20 years from now. #auspol #NDIS #federalbudget #priorities

@TMFScottP "Selfish and childish" sums up nicely the minority of losers determined to feign being offended by an aclnowledgement that takes less than a minute

The replies to this tweet are a real 'mask-off' moment. The people who would support the desecration of our most solemn remembrance ceremony, for over 100,000 war dead, because they don't like part of that ceremony is the very definition of selfish and childish disrespect.

@erw_57 @KellieTranter @Jansant Remember the Greens campaigning consistently against the NDIS corruption that led to this moment? Me neither

@AustralianProf2 @KellieTranter @Jansant Ah yes the best way to deal with fraud is to defund the most vulnerable in society

@Jansant @KellieTranter The same as defending mass immigration which benefits billionaire property developers, banks, supernarkets, toll road operators and other privatized service delivers at the expense of low income earners because you conflate criticism of immigration levels with that of immigrants

@Jansant @KellieTranter You're the one defending a privatised, rorted by the rich, neolberal service delivery scheme which should have been delivered solely by government in the first place. The lack of self awareness is stunning but unsurprising at this point

@Jansant @KellieTranter "neoliberal shitfuckery" is a government devising a privatised service delivery scheme designed to be rorted by the mega rich and whichever other carpet bagger can figure out how to rort it. Defending that neoliberal grift on grounds of "compassion" is useful idiocy for the rich

@AustralianProf2 @KellieTranter I'm not interested in the conflation of two separate issues, one of which, fraud, is used as an excuse to cut the other, service delivery. It's neoliberal shitfuckery and carries no weight with me.

@Jansant @KellieTranter

@AustralianProf2 @KellieTranter No, they're separate issues. Cuts to services in no way addresses fraud.

@Jansant @KellieTranter It is THE issue now because letting the fraud fester for so long has given Labor a perfect excuse to cut spending. Pat yourself on the back for helping to enable it

@Jansant @KellieTranter No, it is THE issue and its been known about for years with Labor doing nothing about it. Thats billions of $ which could have gone to assisting people who really needed it but like my original comment referred to Labor/Liberal rusties willfully ignore their sides corruption

@AustralianProf2 @KellieTranter A separate issue to cuts to services.

@PaulMan70983272 @AvidCommentator x.com/i/status/20466…

@AustralianProf2 @AvidCommentator Thank you for showing your antisemitism and your blinkers to reality. Do you know any Persian people? The ones I do are all cheerleaders for Trump and Benny.

The Iran nuclear deal was working for years, as illustrated below based on data from the International Atomic Energy Agency. Then Trump walked away from it and here we are. Dealing with a problem that he created. Chart: Statista

@PaulMan70983272 @AvidCommentator The link which you yourself supplied states that. And the only death/rape cult which wants to dominate the ME and and the world, and is currently demonstrating so, is Israel

@AustralianProf2 @AvidCommentator So you would trust anything that the IRGC says as gospel? They are a cult that wants to dominate the ME and then the world.

@PaulMan70983272 @AvidCommentator 😂